Pittsburgh Nesties
MandyMilller
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
** lala **
How are things going with the house? Did they start your siding yet?
Things are still moving at a snail's pace over at our lot. They haven't done a single thing since 6/15 except for deliver the lumber, which has now been just sitting on our lot untouched since Thurs. Everyone kept telling us it would go so quickly, but I've found the opposite to be true. Our PM claims they're supposed to start the roof and HVAC on Thurs. and that we're still on schedule, but I'm skeptical.
Re: ** lala **
Well, I feel bad telling you this but, our house it done. We close of Friday and are moving in on Monday. The siding and brick look really good together. I'm glad I put up a fight for the right brick. I haven't been to the house in a couple weeks. I just want to walk in on Friday and see the finished project. I think I'm going to cry like a baby when I walk in there. I'm just so happy it's finished!
I can't believe they are moving so slowly with your house. Are they moving quickly on other houses in your plan? Just stay on top of your pm, keep asking questions. Hopefully they start moving their butts on Thursday.
That's awesome! You must be so excited! I want to see a picture of the final product when you have time. There's an Oakmont on the street behind us that appears to have the Brown's Valley, but it looks like the "other" Brown's Valley so I'm sure yours is much nicer.
I don't know what the deal is honestly. It's frustrating. I follow a couple of the Pgh Ryan bloggers and they all seem to have similar complaints about delays in framing (which worries me even more). We literally haven't spoken to our PM since our preconstruction meeting at the end of May (just exchanged a couple of texts initiated by me), so I feel very uninformed and frustrated. They just started selling phase 3 a couple of weeks ago, so I don't know if the delays are due to that or not. Literally every single aspect has taken longer than we anticipated. No one in our neighborhood is super close to us in terms of their timeline, so it's hard to compare.
I agree, there's no need to be nasty but I think you should stay in contact and if somethings bothering you, you should be able to talk about it.
I think when you are building with such a major builder like this, you have to stay on top of things. I think it's too easy to get lost in the shuffle. They're dealing with so many people.
When do you need to be out of your current house? You're right, that is ridiculous. I hope he gives you some answers and you see some framing very, very soon. How are they doing the roof on Thursday when there's no framing on Tuesday? That's what I'd be asking.
Our buyers are giving us till 8/31. We signed our paper work 3/31 but for some reason didn't have our precon meeting till 5/25. Initially we were told 8/17, but then they gave us 8/31 as a close date because they said our lumber was delayed. They then changed it to 8/24 when I bulked because we'd literally have to move ON closing day.
He texted me back and said he doesn't have time for a call b/c he's in a meeting but that the framer is there today. I'm getting the impression he has no idea what's going on himself, and worse that he doesn't care. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to ask for a call when we're supposedly two months from closing and we've spoken exactly one time for an hour. I feel bad if I'm being overly anxious, but at the same time he's done nothing to build our trust in him!
Maybe they can get it framed in a day, but I don't exactly want them rushing and I don't want to run so tight on our timeline that if any little thing comes up later in the process we're screwed.
I've been following your building process to have better insight when we start our build, but oh, after reading this last post, I would be on the phone with Ryan and your PM first thing in the morning.
I hope this turns around for you. It seems like you've had a difficult time building with Ryan. We aren't even breaking ground on our house until next summer (it'll be a 9-10 month build with move in in Spring 2014...winter weather pending) and we've already met with our builder's equivalent of the project manager twice and he's taking us to 2 different homes in July (one in the framing/roofing stage and one in the final touches stage) to show us his philosophy and some of the steps in the process from his perspective and some things to consider for when we draw up our plans with the architect this fall.
I would have replied "not my house".
I know your husband is trying to take a hands off approach to this, but it sounds like you need to be more present in your PM's life so he remembers you and you are kept up to date with any updates or delays along the way.
Thanks for the input! Here's the follow up to the story...
I did respond "that's not our house" and told him who we are. He apologized and admitted that he stored me as another customer in his phone and the entire time he thought that's who I was. I responded back and asked if that meant that our roof and heating will not be going in Thurs., and said we're getting anxious and we would still like to schedule a call since it has been a month since our last convo.
He finally called me a few hours later. He was nice and apologetic, but he did confirm that we're already 5 days behind schedule. They won't start framing till Thurs (a full week after our lumber arrived) and the heating and roof won't be started till next Tues. If the heating guy doesn't come (which I still don't understand why that's a concern), because of the holiday we're going to be in trouble. Like the kind of trouble that pushes us into Sept. He had a million excuses about how it's their busiest spring in 6 years, yada yada, but at the end of the day is that really our problem? I work in a service oriented business and I'd never complain to a client that I'm busy with other clients.
So that's it. We can't lock our interest rate till after the 4th now and best case scenario is we'll have two days before the end of Aug. to close and move. I know things happen when you're building, but I'm honestly so annoyed. If they would've had our pre construction meeting on time this likely wouldn't even be an issue. We didn't list/sell our house till over a month and a half after we signed our contract. Had we known our projected date was Aug. 31 rather than the 17th, we would've held off a little longer and made sure we communicated the situation to our buyers. Basically we picked buyers based on the fact that they could let us live here till Aug. (not because they were offering what we really wanted), and if Ryan screws this up it was all for nothing b/c we're still going to have to move twice. Ugh.
ugh, Mandy, I'm sorry what a crappy situation and so frustrating for you guys, I'm sure.
FWIW, we closed on both of our homes on the same day, and moved in to the new house later that afternoon. It was crazy and chaotic, but it worked out ok.
Jake - 1.15.08
Liam - 5.17.11
I agree, them being busy is not your problem and a lame excuse to offer a customer. Hopefully now that he "knows who you are"
they'll start working on your house. I know moving twice would suck (we are doing it), but I wouldn't stress too much about that right now. Give them another week or two (and stay on them!), hopefully they can catch up a little.
I know your dh doesn't want to bother the pm but, what's that saying? The squeeky wheel gets the oil....something like that.
We hired movers...I'll never move myself again, ever! it was worth every penny! We used Deily Movers. We closed on a Wednesday; they came to our old house on Tuesday and loaded everything into their truck (we had packed everything ourselves). They stored it overnight in the truck, then came to the new house Wednesday afternoon after we had completed the closings that morning, unloaded it all that day.
We chose that particular company because their regular moving prices were competitive with other companies, but their fee to store overnight was significanly less than the other quotes we received, which were going to cost us an arm and a leg to store.
If you end up having to do something like that (or just in general if you use a moving company) my advice is to get detailed instructions as to how and what has to be packed up. There were some random items we had that were bulky & we assumed they would just toss them in the back of the truck, but when they arrived that morning they said they had to be packed into something, so Brian was rushing around trying to find things to toss stuff into.
Jake - 1.15.08
Liam - 5.17.11
THIS is our house (finally)! You have to take pity on our project manager... between the confusion with the texts and the photo with his finger covering half of it, he's clearly challenged by mobile technology